Lifeboat Foundation

A self-driving car may someday have to decide between your life and the lives of others. But how should the car choose? If you don’t know how to make that decision, that’s okay — Washington doesn’t either.

That’s one big takeaway in a new, lengthy document from the Department of Transportation that lays out options to make autonomous vehicles safer–and represents the most public sign of the attention self-driving cars are getting from politicians despite their inability to vote.

Quantum computing pioneers want to patent AI telerobotics controlled by humans, and monkeys.

New rules of the road for robot cars coming out of Washington this week could lead to the eventual extinction of one of the defining archetypes of the past century: the human driver.

While banning people from driving may seem like something from a Kurt Vonnegut short story, it’s the logical endgame of a technology that could dramatically reduce — or even eliminate — the 1.25 million road deaths a year globally. Human error is the cause of 94 percent of roadway fatalities, U.S. safety regulators say, and robot drivers never get drunk, sleepy or distracted.

Autonomous cars already have “superhuman intelligence” that allows them to see around corners and avoid crashes, said Danny Shapiro, senior director of automotive at Nvidia Corp., a maker of high-speed processors for self-driving cars.

Continue reading “Get Ready For Freeways That Ban Human Drivers” »

Nanotechnology has reshaped the technological discoveries in the recent times. Nanotechnology has enabled the creation and invention of numerous things with wide potentialities. Every field is subject to constant evolution, nanotechnology is no exception. Researchers and scientists who are engaged with nanotechnology have now come up with femtotechnology.

Femtotechnology is widely defined as, “Hypothetical term used in reference to structuring of matter on the scale of a femtometer, which is 10^−15m. This is a smaller scale in comparison to nanotechnology and picotechnology which refer to 10^−9m and 10^−12m respectively.”

Continue reading “Femtotechnology: A technology that is Beyond Nanotechnology” »

Over time, technology offers solutions to old problems while creating new issues in the process. The more powerful the technology, the greater its potential to do good and harm. Artificial intelligence is no exception, and as AI has advanced, worry about its risks has grown too.

Technology’s dual identity isn’t new, Ray Kurzweil said in a Q&A at Singularity University.

Continue reading “Ray Kurzweil: We Can Control AI Before It Controls Us” »

Professor Alexi Samsonovich, a Russian AI expert has revealed that Russia is “on the verge” of creating thinking and feeling robots.

AI has been making great strides in the past few years, beating humans at our own game, as well as augmenting and even replacing human controlled systems. However, some are still not impressed with these developments and feel more should be done.

Such is the view of Professor Alexi Samsonovich, who announced that Russia “is on the verge” of a major AI milestone —robots that can feel human emotion!

Continue reading “Scientist Claims to be On the Verge of Making An AI That ‘Feels’ True Emotions” »

1st Robot has been arrested this year; guess Kurzweil’s request for Robots to have Constitutional Rights may have a need.

You might be forgiven if you were under the impression that the Russian government is a bit behind the times when it comes to modern technology and its never ending desire to stifle every last bit of dissent possible. Between the bouts its had with internet censorship and some strange claims about how binge-watching streaming services are a form of United States mind-control, it would be quite easy to be left with the notion that this is all for comedy. Alas, blunders and conspiracy theories aside, much of this technological blundering is mere cover for the very real iron grip the Russians place upon free speech, with all manner of examples in technology used as excuses to silence its critics.

And now it’s no longer just human beings that need fear the Russian government, it seems. Just this past week, a robot was arrested at a political rally. And, yes, I really do mean a robot, and, yes, I really do mean arrested.

Continue reading “Not Content With Silencing Human Critics, Russia Has Now Arrested A Robot” »

The nominee to lead the U.S. Strategic Command warned Congress this week that China and Russia are rapidly building space warfare capabilities and the United States is lagging behind in efforts to counter the threat.

Both Beijing and Moscow are developing anti-satellite missiles and laser guns and maneuvering killer space robots that could cripple strategic U.S. communications, navigation and intelligence satellites, the backbone of American high-technology warfare.

Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, picked to be the next Stratcom commander, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Chinese and Russian space weapons pose “an emerging challenge” and that the Pentagon is accelerating its efforts to counter the threat.

Continue reading “China, Russia space war weapons on fast track” »

Edward Snowden has warned people not to use Google’s new chat app, because it lets the company read everything that they say.

Google has finally released its new chat app after showing it off over the summer. It comes with a robot that watches everything people say and then stores it for later analysis, using that data to improve the app itself.

But that also means that chats are stored on Google’s servers indefinitely, and are able to be read by it. The company had initially indicated that the messages would only be stored temporarily, limiting the possible impact of any data breach and retaining some privacy for users.

Continue reading “Google’s new chat app should be deleted and never used, says Edward Snowden” »